[2026] SGFC 107

MSS 2621/2025 was the mother’s application against the father for child maintenance of S$1,500 per month. The application was made under section 69(2) of the Women’s Charter 1961 (the “Charter”).

The child in question is presently 19 years old and had been residing in Perth, Western Australia (“WA”) together with the mother. The father used to reside in Perth with the mother and the child, but relocated back to Singapore in 2018. The parties were then embroiled in divorce proceedings in Perth from 2021 to 2025. No orders on child maintenance were made by the WA court because the issue of child maintenance was managed administratively by an executive governmental agency in Australia known as Services Australia.

The father’s position in these proceedings was that the application should be dismissed. He argued in the main that the mother was attempting to have an “impermissible second bite of the cherry” by filing this application because the child had already attained the age of majority in Australia (i.e. 18 years old) in April 2025. No application to stay these proceedings was, however, filed by the father who was unrepresented. From the father’s position arose three interesting issues which lay at the heart of this matter:

(a) whether the court can order a stay of proceedings in child maintenance applications under Part 8 of the Charter on its own motion;

(b) if so, whether such a stay on the ground of forum non conveniens should be ordered in the present case; and

(c) if so, why the application should not instead be dismissed.

I heard the parties on 6 June 2026 and 30 July 2026, and ordered an unconditional stay of the mother’s application. Despite the increasing number of transnational marriages and cross-border matrimonial disputes, there remains a dearth of jurisprudence on the staying of maintenance proceedings under Part 8 of the Charter, and none on the court’s own motion. I therefore set out the full grounds of my decision here.

BACKGROUND TO THE DISPUTE

The parties were married in Singapore on 10 December 1998. They have two children born to their marriage, a son aged 22 years, and a daughter aged 19 years who is the intended beneficiary of this maintenance application (hereinafter, the “child”).

In 2009, the parties and their two children moved to Perth, Australia. The child was only around 1 year old at the material time. The father subsequently obtained an Australian citizenship, while the mother and the child became Permanent Residents (“PR”) in Australia.

In 2018, the father relocated back to Singapore presumably because of the breakdown of the marriage between the parties at that time. The mother and the child remained in Perth.

Shortly after the father’s repatriation to Singapore, he commenced divorce proceedings in the Family Court of Western Australia at Perth (“WA Court”). The marriage was terminated on 1 October 2021 by the WA Court. The ancillary matters would not, however, reach adjudication in the WA Court until some four years later in February 2025. As mentioned above, no order on child maintenance was made by the WA Court because the child had already attained the age of majority of 18 years old at the material time. However, prior to the child attaining 18 years of age, the father had been making child maintenance payments of around AUD $1,200 to AUD $1,300 under an administrative child support scheme run by an executive governmental agency known as Services Australia. The father’s obligation to provide financial support to the child was due to expire in April 2025 upon the child attaining 18 years of age, but was extended by Services Australia until the completion of the child’s secondary education in November 2025.

The father contended and the mother did not dispute that he did not once default on his obligation to maintain the child under the scheme, even though he was not even residing in the same jurisdiction as the child. It was also common ground that the father had stopped paying any maintenance for the child since November 2025.

THE PARTIES’ RESPECTIVE CASES

The parties’ respective cases were relatively straightforward.

The mother argued that her present application should be granted because the father had completely neglected to maintain the child since November 2025.

Conversely, the father urged me to dismiss the application, contending that his obligation to maintain the child was already discharged under Australian law upon the child attaining adulthood in Australia. Even after the possibility of a stay of this application was raised to the parties, the father maintained his primary position that the application should be dismissed, although he also submitted that it should be stayed in the alternative.

As there was no stay application before me, I first had to determine whether the court can order a stay of proceedings on its own motion.

The starting point is section 11B of the Family Justice Act 2014 (“FJA 2014”) which empowers the court to make orders that the court has the power to make on the application of any person, on its own motion. It provides as follows:

A stay of proceedings is an order that the court “has the power to make on the application of any person” even in quasi-criminal proceedings under Part 8 of the Charter (see P.3, r. 2 and r. 12 of the Family Justice (General) Rules 2024 (“FJGR 2024”) read with paragraph 39 of the Family Justice Courts Practice Directions 2024). The real question is when this power should be exercised. The Second Reading of the Family Justice Reform Bill (Singapore Parliamentary Debates, Official Report (8 May 2023) vol 95) (Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Law, Ms Rahayu Mahzam) (“Second Reading”) is instructive in this regard:

Plainly, the present case in which neither party was represented is precisely the type of situation envisaged by Parliament in the Second Reading. As outlined above, the father did not dispute that he had neglected to pay any maintenance to the child since November 2025, but instead based his entire case on the singular premise that he had already discharged his child maintenance obligations under Australian law, where the age of majority is 18 years old. The father therefore argued that any application for adult child maintenance should be heard by the WA Court and not in Singapore. While the father did not apply for a stay (presumably because he was not aware that he could do so), the court should, in my view, at least consider ordering a stay on its own motion so as to “deal with the issues effectively”.

I digress at this juncture to observe that a stay of proceedings is generally considered to be an interlocutory order and not an order of a substantive nature because it does not address the substantive merits of the claims in dispute. Section 11B(2) of the FJA 2014 would thus not be applicable here. Nevertheless, as I was considering an unconditional stay on the ground of forum non conveniens which would have the effect of bringing the mother’s application here to a complete and potentially indefinite halt, I applied the preconditions in section 11B(2) of the FJA 2014 in the interest of preserving natural justice. To that end, I conveyed the possibility of a stay on the court’s own motion to both parties at the first hearing before me on 6 June 2026, and directed the parties to file an affidavit by a qualified solicitor in Western Australia explaining, inter alia, whether the WA Court has jurisdiction to hear a post-divorce application for child maintenance for an adult child and who has standing to bring such an application. I also directed the parties to file a supplementary affidavit stating, inter alia, the parties’ and the child’s living arrangements since the marriage, their citizenship and residency statuses in Singapore and Western Australia, the child’s current schooling arrangements, and why a stay should or should not be ordered. The father filed his supplementary affidavit on 6 July 2026 exhibiting a legal opinion by a law firm in Western Australia. The mother did not comply with my directions. Instead, she sent a letter to the court on 30 July 2026, one day before the second hearing on 31 July 2026, without any legal opinion by an Australian solicitor and addressing only some of the factual points that I had directed to be included in the supplementary affidavit. Notably, the mother made little effort in her letter to persuade me that her application should not be stayed. It was only at the second hearing before me on 31 July 2026 that she sought to argue that her application should proceed.

As regards the second precondition under section 11B(2)(b) of the FJA 2014, subject to the application of the well-settled test in Spiliada Maritime Corporation v Cansulex Ltd [1987] AC 460 (“Spiliada”), I find that it would be in the interests of justice to at least consider a stay of this application, given that the father had angled his entire case towards such an order despite not applying for it. The objectives under p.1 r. 4 of the FJGR 2024 of fair access to justice and fair and practical results for parties are germane in that respect. In particular, it would be neither fair nor practical for the mother’s application to proceed in Singapore if WA Court is the more appropriate forum for the issue of child maintenance to be ventilated, and allowing the application to proceed here may constitute an unfair access to justice.

Being satisfied that the rules of natural justice have been observed, I turn to examine whether the present application should be stayed on the ground of forum non conveniens under the Spiliada test.

The Spliada test was accepted by the Singapore Court of Appeal in Rickshaw Investments Ltd and another v Nicolai Baron von Uexkull [2007] 1 SLR(R) at [12] to [15]. It comprises two stages. At the first stage, the court will determine the most appropriate forum for the hearing of the matter. If the court is satisfied that there is a clearly more appropriate forum than Singapore, a stay will ordinarily be granted. The second stage entails an inquiry into whether there will be a substantial failure of justice if the case is heard in the more appropriate foreign court. If cogent evidence can be provided to that end, a stay may then be refused.

Importantly, the Spiliada test has been applied to matrimonial proceedings and applications under the Charter (see, for example, Sanjeev Sharma s/o Shri Sarvjeet Sharma v Surbhi Ahuja d/o Sh Virendra Kumar Ahuja [2015] 3 SLR 1056; TDX v TDY [2015] 4 SLR 982; BDA v BDB [2013] 1 SLR 607; TGT v TGU [2015] SGHCF 10 (“TGT v TGU”)). Unlike the present case, however, these cases concerned concurrent proceedings in Singapore and a foreign court. In contrast, the mother’s case here seemed to rest on the premise that she did not pursue any claim for child maintenance in Western Australia by reason of the child having already attained the age of majority there. She said as much to me at the second hearing on 6 July 2026. In other words, there were no considerations of a lis alibis pendens in the present case.

Despite the mother’s failure to comply with my directions for the filing of an affidavit by a qualified solicitor in Western Australia, I address first the preliminary issue of whether the WA Court is an available forum within the meaning of the Spiliada test to begin with. In my view, it is. For one, it is hornbook law that a foreign court is deemed to be available if it has competent jurisdiction (see J Fawcett and J M Carruthers, Cheshire, North & Fawcett’s Private International Law (Oxford University Press, 14th Ed, 2008) at p 429) or if “it is open to the plaintiff to institute proceedings as of right in that forum” (see Hindocha and ors v Gheewala and ors [2004] 1 CLC 502 at [22]). There is no question that the WA Court is a court of competent jurisdiction; the mere fact that the marriage between the parties was dissolved in the WA Court only recently in 2025 is fatal to any argument to the contrary. It is also not open to the mother to argue that she does not have standing to make an application for child maintenance in the WA Court against the father. According to the legal opinion of the father’s Australian solicitors (which was not challenged by the mother who had declined to seek her own legal opinion), any application for child maintenance “may be brought by persons authorised under the relevant legislation, including a parent and, where permitted by the legislation, the adult child”. The father’s solicitors cited two separate pieces of Australian legislation, namely, the Family Court Act 1997 (WA) and the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth). Both section 118 of the Family Court Act 1997 (WA) and section 66F of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) are identical in providing that an application for child maintenance under these provisions may be brought by either or both of the child’s parents, or the child.

More fundamentally, the potential absence of relief under Australian law – a point which was in any event disputed by the father – does not render the WA Court an unavailable forum. This was an issue that the High Court in TGT v TGU grappled with at length. In that case, the mother had made an application under section 5 of the Guardianship of Infants Act 1934 for maintenance against the father on behalf of a child who was born out of wedlock and had already attained 18 years of age. Much like the present case, the mother, who was residing with the child in Hong Kong, argued that she was driven to make the application in Singapore because she could no longer do so in Hong Kong, where the age of majority is also 18 years old. While the mother acknowledged that Hong Kong law allowed applications for an adult child within limited circumstances, such applications were only allowed in respect of a legitimate child and not a child born out of wedlock. The father applied to stay the mother’s application on the ground of forum non conveniens. The mother resisted the application and argued, inter alia, that the Hong Kong court was not an available forum because she had “not commenced any maintenance application in Hong Kong, and there is no possibility of the Mother commencing maintenance proceedings in Hong Kong now” (see TGT v TGU at [20]).

After surveying the relevant English and local authorities (see TGT v TGU at [21] to [22] and [25] to [27]), Foo Tuat Yien JC (as she then was) rejected the mother’s arguments and held as follows:

For the same reasons elucidated in TGT v TGU, I am unable to accept the mother’s arguments to the extent that she was suggesting that Western Australia is not an available forum. Even if I accept that there is no relief available for adult child maintenance in Western Australia (which I do not), that is a question to be properly determined only at the second stage of the Spiliada test. The question at this first stage is, instead, whether Western Australia or Singapore is the clearly more appropriate forum. It is to that question that I now turn, having found that Western Australia is an available forum within the meaning of the Spiliada test.

The central inquiry at the first stage of the Spiliada test is whether the dispute has the most real and substantial connection to a foreign or local forum (see TGT v TGU at [29]). This inquiry is typically undertaken with reference to connecting factors to one forum over another. As Lord Goff explained in Spiliada (at 477F to 478B):

I hasten to add that this is not a mathematical exercise in that the court will not simply look at the number of connecting factors in favour of one forum over the other, for each factor does not carry the same weight especially in the context of family proceedings (see XSX v XSY [2025] SGFC 110 (“XSX v XSY”) at [22]). Indeed, the courts have recognised that the factor of habitual residence usually carries significant weight at the first stage of the Spiliada analysis, and tends to outweigh the other connecting factors such as domicile where these factors are in conflict (see Lee Mei-Chih v Chang Kuo-Yuan [2012] 4 SLR 1116 at [5] to [6]; Helen Dian Womersley v Nigel Maurice Womersley [2003] SGDC 186 at [11]; XSX v XSY at [33]).

In my judgment, all of the conceivable connecting factors are either neutral or point to Western Australia being the clearly more appropriate forum. I explain.

The mother and the child are Singaporean citizens. The father is an Australian citizen. The factor of nationality is thus neutral at best, given that one party would be required to travel no matter where the application is heard (see BDA v BDB [2013] 1 SLR 607 (“BDA v BDB”) at [29]). In fact, the mother has been residing in Australia despite being Singaporean, while the father has been residing in Singapore despite being Australian. The fact that the parties’ residences do not correspond with their respective nationalities buttresses the point that nationality is the weakest of the connecting factors (see BDA v BDB at [29]; XSX v XSY at [25]).

This refers to the country that one treats as his/her permanent home. A person’s domicile may be determined with reference to his/her origin, dependence or choice (see Peters Roger May v Pinder Lillian Gek Lian [2006] 2 SLR(R) 381 at [15] to [25]). Under section 3(5) of the Women’s Charter 1961, a Singaporean citizen is presumed to be domiciled in Singapore until the contrary is proved. Further, a party’s domicile of origin can be displaced by his/her domicile of choice if there is evidence of an intention to reside permanently in a place other than his/her domicile of origin.

I had much difficulty ascertaining the child’s intentions based on the evidence before me. Both the mother and the child are permanent residents (“PR”) in Australia. They had been residing in Western Australia since the family relocated there in 2009, when the child was only 1 year old. Crucially, the mother and the child remained in Australia even though the father moved back to Singapore in 2018 upon the breakdown of the marriage. The mother informed me at the hearing on 31 July 2026 that the child has been in Singapore since May 2026 and found full-time employment here in July 2026. The mother also said that the child is currently taking a ‘gap year’ before potentially furthering her studies due to her alleged mental health issues. The mother could not however tell me whether the child would pursue her further studies in Singapore or Australia, if at all. When I asked the mother about what the child’s intentions were when she came to Singapore in May 2026, the mother could not give me a straight answer, first claiming that the child had returned to Singapore with the intention of staying, then saying that the child did not know and was “taking things step by step”. When the mother was then asked about the child’s current intentions, the mother admitted that the child is still unsure about whether she intends to return to Perth or continue staying in Singapore. The only thing that the mother was certain of was that she (i.e. the mother) considered Perth to be her home and would be returning to Australia after the conclusion of these proceedings.

The mother’s statements were understandably but obviously equivocal. As she ultimately accepted, she had no way of ascertaining the child’s intentions conclusively, given that the child was herself unsure. It is because of these evidential difficulties with establishing intention that the court in XSX v XSY concluded at [28] that the factor of domicile “can be a less reliable indicator of the most appropriate forum to hear a divorce application”, observing that evidence of intention to permanently reside is usually subjective, equivocal, and prone to rapid changes due to unexpected circumstances. I see no reason that the same observations should not also apply to maintenance applications under Part 8 of the Charter or all other matrimonial proceedings. Indeed, the present case is a perfect illustration of these intractable evidential difficulties, and I therefore decline to place any significant weight either way on the factor of domicile.

In any event, most of the mother’s oral statements on 31 July 2026 were not properly put into evidence even though she was given an opportunity to raise these exact points in the supplementary affidavit that I had directed. I therefore had to take her statements with more than a grain of salt. The undisputed facts that are in evidence are only as follows. The child had spent 18 out of her 19 years of life living in Western Australia. And the child had only started working in Singapore in this month of July 2026, while the parties were already embroiled in these proceedings. In the premises, if any significance is to be placed on the factor of domicile, that would only weigh in favour of Western Australia being the more appropriate forum.

As mentioned above, the habitual residence factor tends to be a weighty consideration at the first stage of the Spiliada test. One’s habitual residence is ascertained by whether he/she has voluntarily or continuously lived in any given place for one or more “settled purposes”, examples of which include education, business or profession, employment, health, family or even love of the place (see Lee Mei-Chih v Chang Kuo-Yuan [2012] 4 SLR 1115 at [6] to [8]). Importantly, unlike domicile, one does not need to prove an intention to reside permanently in a place to establish habitual residence. All that needs to be shown is a “sufficient degree of continuity to be properly described as settled” (see R v Barnet London Borough Council, Ex p Nilish Shah [1983] 2 AC 309 at 344).

Where custody, care and control, access and maintenance of a child are in issue, the courts have generally recognised that the jurisdiction where the child is habitually resident is “clearly better suited to deal with [such] issues” because that jurisdiction will “have a better understanding of the social norms and environmental factors in the children’s welfare” (see TDX v TDY [2015] 4 SLR 982 at [15]; XLV v XLW [2025] SGHCF 35 at [46]; XSX v XSY at [31(c)]. This was applied in TGT v TGU, where the High Court expressly considered that “the Hong Kong courts will be better placed to determine a reasonable amount of maintenance for R that is appropriate to Hong Kong’s socio-economic context”, before concluding that Hong Kong was the clearly more appropriate forum to determine the mother’s maintenance application for the son (see TGT v TGU at [35] to [36]).

Returning to the present case, the mere fact that the child had been living in Australia for almost the entirety of her life would be sufficient to establish she is habitually resident there. Even though the child has allegedly found full-time employment in Singapore in July 2026, I nevertheless find that her presence in Singapore is transient at best, especially given the mother’s concession that the child is currently on a ‘gap year’. Further, the mother and the parties’ other child are well-settled in Australia and treat Perth as their home. As the court observed in XSX v XSY at [30], where a person’s immediate family are settled can be a “powerful indicator” of habitual residence. I agree. By any objective measure, the child (along with the rest of the family save for the father) has been habitually resident in Australia. I do not think this is displaced by the alleged developments over the past two months, which the mother raised for the first time at the hearing on 31 July 2026. There simply has not been a sufficient degree of continuity for the child to be described as properly settled here.

The child’s habitual residence weighs heavily in favour of Western Australia being the clearly more appropriate forum. As was the case in TGT v TGU, the WA Court will be better suited to ascertain the appropriate amount of maintenance for the child (if any), having regard to Western Australia’s socio-economic context.

In the interest of completeness, I also considered the issues of enforceability and ease of enforcement, even though these were not raised by the mother. It was common ground that the father has been living and working in Singapore since 2018, and that most of his bank accounts and assets are based here.

While it is unclear from case law whether ease of enforceability and enforcement of a maintenance order are even valid connecting factors to begin with, I note that this was touched on in BDA v BDB, which concerned a husband’s application to stay the wife’s maintenance application under section 69 of the Charter on the ground of forum non conveniens. In that case, the parties were Indian nationals who were married in India and subsequently relocated to Singapore, where their son was born. After the breakdown of the marriage some three years into the marriage, the wife returned to India with the son while the husband remained in Singapore. The wife then applied for maintenance in Singapore, shortly after which the husband commenced divorce proceedings in India and applied to stay the wife’s maintenance application in Singapore. In refusing the stay, the High Court had regard to, inter alia, the fact that the husband was residing and working in Singapore, finding that his “income is derived from his work here and he maintains bank accounts in Singapore” (see BDA v BDB at [29]). The High Court then went further to explain that while the procedure for enforcing an Indian court order under the Reciprocal Enforcement of Commonwealth Judgments Act (Cap 264, 1985 Rev Ed) “may be somewhat more cumbersome compared to the enforcement of a Singapore judgment sum in Singapore, this does not per se militate against a stay” (see BDA v BDB at [29]).

To the extent that the BDA v BDB stands for the proposition that enforceability and ease of enforcement are factors to be considered at the first stage of the Spiliada test, I remain unpersuaded one way or the other as to the weight that should be given to these factors in this matter. For one, there is no question that maintenance orders made by the Australian courts are enforceable in Singapore under the Maintenance Orders (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1975 (see also the Maintenance Orders (Reciprocal Enforcement) (Designation of Reciprocating Countries – Australia) Notification 2014). More importantly, as the High Court held in BDA v BDB, the mere fact that it may be more cumbersome to enforce a foreign court order does not, without more, militate against a stay. Indeed, the evidence before me clearly suggests that the father will comply with any maintenance orders which may be made by the Australian court. The father gave unchallenged evidence that he had never defaulted on his child maintenance obligations under the Australian child support scheme run by Services Australia, even when his obligations were extended from April 2025 to November 2025 (i.e. after the child had attained 18 years of age). I would therefore regard these factors as neutral.

Having considered the factors outlined above, I find that Western Australia is the clearly more appropriate forum to determine any application for maintenance for the child under the first stage of the Spiliada test.

I turn to consider the second stage of the Spiliada analysis, that is, whether there will be a denial of substantial justice should the matter be heard in Western Australia.

At its bare essentials, the mother’s case was that the relief she was seeking here (i.e. maintenance for the child) would not be available in Australia because the child has already attained the age of majority under Australian law. This was, however, directly contradicted by the legal opinion prepared by the father’s foreign lawyers, which the mother did not challenge despite being given the opportunity to do so. The legal opinion of the father’s Australian solicitors clearly states that the Australian courts can make orders for a child above 18 years of age within limited circumstances pursuant to section 123(1) and (2) of the Family Court Act 1997 (WA) and section 66L(1) and (2) of the Family Court Act 1975 (Cth). These provisions are identical in providing that a maintenance order for a child exceeding 18 years of age may be made by the court if it is necessary “to enable the child to complete the child’s education” or “because of a mental or physical disability of the child”. The mother’s contention that there was no available relief in the WA Court therefore appeared unfounded and gave a measure of credence to the father’s submission that she was “forum shopping”. Indeed, I observe that it was in the mother’s own evidence that the child has mental health issues and is on medication.

Leaving aside the relevant statutory provisions under Australian law, the fact of the matter is that the child had already been receiving adult child maintenance for a period of around 8 months from April 2025 to November 2025, under the child support scheme by Services Australia. The father stated that this was because the child was repeating Year 12 of her secondary education in Australia. He explained that an application was made (presumably by the mother or the child) to Services Australia to extend the maintenance payments by him from April 2025, when the child attained the age of majority, to November 2025 to cover the completion of her secondary education. The mother did not appear to dispute this. By her own admission in her complaint and documents, the father had only neglected to maintain the child since November 2025. Any assertion that the mother was not aware of the possibility of seeking adult child maintenance in Australia would thus be disingenuous.

Even if the mother’s case is taken at its highest (i.e. that there is no relief for adult child maintenance in Australia), it does not follow that substantial justice will be denied if a stay is ordered. The threshold for establishing a denial of substantial justice is not a low one. Nowhere was this illustrated more clearly than in TGT v TGU, when the High Court considered five cases covering various scenarios, such as where a claim would have been time-barred, where a plaintiff would have been limited to a less favourable remedy, or where a defendant would have had a good and complete defence to the claim (see TGT v TGU from [40] to [53]). As the High Court observed, the common thread running through those cases was that “the courts are slow to find that there will be a denial of justice if a foreign court applies a law unfavourable to a plaintiff” (see TGT v TGU at [54]).

In the subsequent case of Rappo, Tania v Accent Delight International Ltd [2017] 2 SLR 265 (“Rappo”), the Court of Appeal went a step further by refusing to find that substantial justice would be denied even if a party is completely unable to obtain the remedy it seeks in a foreign court. In that case, the respondents, taking the position that the stay application should not be granted, argued that they would be deprived of “legitimate juridical advantages” because Swiss law did not recognise the remedies that they were seeking in Singapore (see Rappo at [107]). The fact that these remedies were not available under Swiss law was common ground between the parties there. The Court of Appeal roundly rejected the respondents’ argument, explaining at [109] to [110] as follows:

The mother did not assert and certainly gave no evidence to suggest that the family justice system in Western Australia is in any way deficient, let alone to the extent that substantial justice will be denied. Indeed, it bears reiteration that the father had dutifully complied with all his child maintenance obligations under the child support scheme by Services Australia, and that this obligation was in fact extended for 8 months after the child had attained 18 years of age. While it may be more difficult for the mother’s claim for child maintenance to succeed in Australia (because the child may not be entitled to such maintenance as a matter of course), the authorities clearly show that this is plainly insufficient. International comity should not only be preserved but take precedence over any alleged juridical disadvantages that the mother may face.

In any event, based on the evidence before me, this did not appear to be a case of unavailability of relief at all. There is thus little to no prejudice to the mother if the application here is stayed. Conversely, allowing the application to proceed would be extremely prejudicial to the father. The child has spent almost the entirety of her life in Australia. It was not until the second hearing on 31 July 2026 that the father first learned about the child’s alleged return to Singapore in May 2026, and it remains unclear whether the child will even continue residing here. Similarly, the father and the mother had spent most of their married life in Australia, where the mother has remained to date. Notwithstanding the father’s return to Singapore in 2018, he continued to pay child maintenance under the scheme until November 2025. It would, in these circumstances, be reasonable for him to expect that his child maintenance obligations should be determined by Australian law.

For completeness, I ought to touch on the applicability (or lack thereof) of the welfare principle. This was briefly alluded to in the mother’s letter to the court of 30 July 2026, wherein she had stated, “All I want is to guard the best outcome for [the child]”.

It is trite that the court’s paramount consideration is the welfare of the child even in child maintenance proceedings (see WLE v WLF [2023] SGHCF 14 at [29]). The welfare principle would, however, only come to the fore after the court has decided that Singapore is the more appropriate forum to hear the matter (see TDX v TDY [2015] 4 SLR 982 at [20] to [22]). It is neither necessary nor proper for the court to decide which forum will better serve the child’s welfare, as that would entail comparing the quality of justice obtainable between two forums. Such an exercise does not sit well with the principle of international comity. Any suggestion that the welfare of the child requires the court to hear the mother’s application here is thus a non-starter.

There being no other suggestion that there will be a substantial failure of justice in Western Australia, I see no reason to depart from the prima facie case for a stay of the present application which arose at the first stage of the Spiliada analysis.

I turn finally to the issue of why a dismissal should not instead be ordered. I make two distinct points in this regard. The first is that, in cases of forum non conveniens, the proper recourse is for the court to stay rather than dismiss the proceedings. The second concerns the requirement for leave to be obtained pursuant to the regime under Chapter 4A of Part 10 of the Charter. The mother’s failure to obtain such leave before filing her application does not constitute grounds for a dismissal, even though doing so would have been more appropriate.

The consequence of a forum non conveniens stay is generally to halt a claim or application from proceeding in the Singapore courts. For all practical intents and purposes, this may have the same effect as a dismissal or discontinuance. But there are key conceptual differences between them.

In Rotary Engineering Ltd and others v Kioumji & Eslim Law Firm and another and another appeal and other matters [2017] SGCA 24 (“Rotary Engineering”), the Court of Appeal observed at [24] that a stay is only suspensory in that the court remains seised of the proceedings and may in principle lift the stay at a later date. I would add that a stay does not go the substantive merits of the case and is therefore considered an interlocutory rather than substantive order. Conversely, a dismissal usually requires the court to adjudicate on the substantive merits of the case before it. Certainly, in the case before me, it was undisputed that the father had neglected to pay any maintenance for the child since November 2025. Assuming that to be the case, I would likely not have been able to dismiss the mother’s application on the merits. At the same time, granting the mother’s application would, in my view, cut against any reasonable notion of justice and fairness. I am therefore compelled to eschew a dismissal in favour of a stay of the mother’s application. If it later transpires that the WA Court is not willing to assume jurisdiction for any reason, it remains open to the mother to apply to this court to lift the stay (see Rotary Engineering at [24]).

The Chapter 4A regime was enacted into the Charter in 2011 to empower the court to make ancillary orders on the division of matrimonial assets or maintenance upon a valid annulment or dissolution (or equivalent) of a marriage by a foreign court. The framework under Chapter 4A comprises two stages: the ex parte leave stage and the inter partes substantive application stage (see sections 121D and 121G of the Charter). At both stages albeit to differing extents, the court is enjoined to consider, amongst other things, whether Singapore is the appropriate forum for the application (see UFN v UFM and another matter [2019] 2 SLR 650 (“UFN v UFM”) at [31] to [34]). Section 121F of the Charter provides for nine factors that the court must take into account in this analysis:

The overlap between the section 121F factors and the Spiliada test is self-evident. Under both frameworks, the court must have regard to the connection that the parties and their child(ren) may have with Singapore and the country in which their marriage was dissolved. Put simply, the court will need to be persuaded that Singapore is the appropriate forum to hear the substantive claims before allowing the matter to proceed. There are, of course, a few notable differences such as the fact that the court must dismiss instead of stay an application under the Chapter 4A regime if it is not satisfied that Singapore is the appropriate forum, but I do not think it is necessary for me to further explore these here.

The salient point for present purposes is this. It is clear from a plain reading of section 121G of the Charter that the Chapter 4A regime does not apply to applications for child maintenance under Part 8 of the Charter. The Chapter 4A regime applies only to orders under section 127(1) of the Charter, insofar as child maintenance is concerned. It follows that a party who has obtained a foreign divorce could technically circumvent the requirement for leave to be obtained under the first stage of the Chapter 4A regime, by filing an application for child maintenance under Part 8 of the Charter. In my view, Parliament could not have intended for this legislative gap which has, regrettably, reared its head before me. This is especially so because the substantive requirements under sections 69(2) and 127(1) of the Charter are the same (see section 127(2) of the Charter and TCT v TCU [2015] SGHCF 3 at [31]), even though maintenance proceedings under Part 8 of the Charter take a slightly different form in that they are quasi-criminal in nature. Nevertheless, as this was not squarely in issue before me, and without the benefit of representation and full legal submissions, I would prefer to leave this open for the consideration of a future (higher) court.

In any event, the mother did not require leave to commence her application under Part 8 of the Charter. While she should instead have proceeded with an application under Chapter 4A, I do not think that her failure to do so was fatal in and of itself. I would therefore be slow to dismiss her application on this basis.

For the reasons given in this judgment, I find that a stay of the mother’s application on the ground of forum non conveniens is the only appropriate order to make. An unconditional stay of MSS 2621/2025 is thus granted on the court’s own motion.